Murders Riverside County

Dedrick Gobert, an actor in the movie "Boyz N the Hood," was one of two men shot to death in a fight over a weekend drag-race, authorities said Monday. Gobert, 22, of Inglewood, and Ignacio Hernandez, 19, of Rosemead, were killed early Saturday on an isolated road in the Mira Loma area north of here, said a spokesman for the Riverside County Sheriff's Department. A 16-year-old girl was hospitalized with a gunshot wound in the neck.

Three young men were shot to death Friday in a parking lot across the street from a Norco nightclub. Witnesses told Riverside County sheriff's deputies that the victims had argued with other men outside A Mi Hacienda in the 1600 block of Hamner Avenue about 1:30 a.m. Deputies were called to the nightclub to handle the disturbance, but when they arrived there were no problems, said Sgt. Mark Lohman. Deputies left to handle another disturbance at a convenience store a few blocks away.

The confessed killer of a Garden Grove woman stabbed to death with an ice pick was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison Thursday after new details of the slaying were disclosed in a probation report. Cameron Seaholm, 22, pleaded guilty in September to the first-degree murder of Denise Duerr, 21, who was found dead in April. During sentencing Thursday before Superior Court Judge Dennis Myers, Seaholm apologized for the slaying and said he wished he could exchange places with his victim.

For the second time in a week, San Bernardino County sheriff's investigators say, one sibling killed another, this time in Highland. Sheriff's spokeswoman Robin Haynal said Tuesday that authorities have taken a 16-year-old Highland girl into custody in the killing of her brother, 20-year-old Cavdrawn O'Ferral. The girl's name is being withheld because she is a minor, Haynal said.

In a scene that could have come from one of his horror flicks, Hollywood B-movie director Al Adamson was found murdered and buried in a grave where his indoor Jacuzzi once sat, Indio police said Monday. The body of the 66-year-old Adamson--whose films included "Five Bloody Graves" and "Satan's Sadists"--was discovered Wednesday in Indio, about 100 miles southeast of Los Angeles, said Lt. Bruce Bower.

An 11-year-old boy's secret tape-recording of his mother's killing was played in court on the first day of the trial of a man charged with fatally shooting his wife while family members watched. "Help, help please. . . . My dad just shot my mother," 12-year-old Shawna Lockhart is heard telling police on the phone after seven shots ring out during a quarrel between her father and stepmother.

Three days after a San Clemente man was fatally shot and robbed in Riverside, a 17-year-old boy was arrested in connection with the crimes, police said Saturday. Richard Sutcliff, 57, was shot to death and stripped of his vehicle and credit cards on the night of Jan. 1 in the 3200 block of Trade Center, a small street in Riverside. Police found his body in a parking lot about 10:50 p.m. when they responded to an emergency call, Riverside Police Officer Roger Sutton said.

A Los Angeles man's death sentence for the contract killing of a former professional basketball player's wife has been upheld by the state Supreme Court. Noel Jackson was convicted of the December 1984 murder of Sonja Niles outside her home in the Riverside County community of Corona. Prosecutors said Jackson had been hired by the victim's husband, Michael Niles, to kill his wife and had been promised $5,000 from her $100,000 life insurance policy.

Grace and Robert Navarro had lived for 21 years in a quiet Buena Park neighborhood where they'd reared three children who had never been in any serious trouble. In spite of all the crime they had read about in the newspapers, they felt safe in their world. Violence had never directly touched their lives. Then at 4 a.m. on Jan. 12 came a phone call that shattered their sense of security and serenity.

Career felon Warren James Bland, already serving a life sentence for terrorizing women and children in a series of sexual assaults in Southern California, should be executed for the 1986 kidnaping, torture and murder of a 7-year-old South Pasadena girl, a jury determined Monday. A Riverside County Superior Court jury deliberated just 90 minutes Monday before returning its verdict. Judge Gordon R. Burkhart set sentencing for May 28.

Two psychologists found that a man accused of killing one child and chaining others to shield them from society was legally sane, though he periodically believed he was Jesus and was at times unwilling to speak to his attorney, insisting that God would "make it right." The psychologists, whose reports were unsealed Friday by a judge, also said John Davis experienced auditory and visual hallucinations and attempted suicide shortly after his arrest.

Gunmen opened fire on a smuggler and three illegal immigrants, causing their Chevrolet Blazer to plunge into a canal, where two of the passengers drowned, Riverside County sheriff's deputies said. The ambush occurred Saturday on a desert road north of the Salton Sea in Riverside County, about 130 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Deputies said the smuggler was driving a mother, her 14-year-old daughter and an 18-year-old man north when they came to a white van blocking the dirt road.

His daughter calls 10 times a day from New York, just to hear her dad pick up the phone. His sons hover close by his side, quietly studying the broad face they scarcely know. Away from the world for 18 years, Eugene Sylve missed high school graduations, the births of six grandchildren and millions of more ordinary moments. Back home now in Long Beach, he swears he will not miss anything else. Sylve, 57, is something of a miracle in California today--a convicted murderer out on parole. Gov.

An abortion doctor who pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter for a mistake that took a Barstow patient's life was sentenced Friday to a year in jail. Bruce Steir, 69, also was put on formal probation for 60 months and ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service. Riverside Superior Court Judge Vilia Sherman suspended 180 days of the jail sentence, meaning Steir will have to serve six months.

The second of two girls shot in the head Monday by the father of the younger one died Thursday from her injuries, the Riverside County sheriff's department reported. Sally Kay Bernard, 6, was pronounced dead shortly before noon at the Riverside County Regional Medical Center, sheriff's spokeswoman Sgt. Perri Feinstein-Portales said. Her half-sister, Corrynn Benard, 2, died on Wednesday. Authorities said both girls were shot by Onesimus P.

A home-invasion robbery suspect who was shot and killed by sheriff's deputies in Pedley on Friday was the grandson of the woman who was house-sitting the home where the crime occurred, authorities said Tuesday. The suspect, who was killed while trying to elude capture in the heavy brush of the Santa Ana River, was identified as Pedro Olmedo Meza, 17, of Mira Loma.

A jury Wednesday recommended the death penalty for a mother who stabbed her three children to death. Dora Buenrostro, 38, was convicted last week of killing Susana, 9, Vicente, 8, and Deidra, 4, in October 1994. All three children were stabbed in the neck. Jurors said the defendant showed a lack of remorse when she testified during the penalty hearings. Sentencing was scheduled for Oct. 2. Buenrostro killed the children in a rage after a fight with her ex-husband, said Deputy Dist. Atty.

Sheriff's homicide detectives arrested two men and are looking for two brothers in connection with three homicides and two other shootings, including a carjacking that left an off-duty Ontario policeman wounded, authorities said Wednesday. Riverside County Sheriff's Investigator Harry Sawicki said the four men are all believed to be linked to the spate of shootings. The two still at large are considered armed and dangerous, authorities said.

A Riverside County man faces a prison term of 15 years to life for causing a fatal car crash nearly two decades ago that authorities had originally considered to be accidental. Richard Craig Miller, 44, was convicted of second-degree murder Friday by a Riverside County Superior Court jury and is due to be sentenced Nov. 19.

In a mysterious death case so old that files and photographs of the investigation have long been destroyed, a Riverside County man is finally standing trial on a charge of murder in the death of a 44-year-old woman whom he allegedly ran off a dark two-lane road in 1980.